[link|http://www.netjam.org/spoon/|http://www.netjam.org/spoon/]

I was motivated to create a Smalltalk system that had only what it needed to start and extend itself, so that newcomers could install and run the system quickly and easily.

I've developed a minimal system which can install itself from a single web page visit. It's a webpage that, when visited, downloads an installer program and runs it. The installer program downloads a snapshot and virtual machine, then decompresses and runs the virtual machine. The virtual machine decompresses and loads the snapshot, and the snapshot updates itself. The installer is 60KB, the virtual machine is 125KB, and the snapshot is 91KB, for a total of 276KB (or about ten seconds of download time with a typical broadband connection).

An interesting intermediate result of this work has been "imprinting", the transfer of behavior from one system to another as a side-effect of running it.

Spoon is derived from Squeak, but I intend it as an exemplar of its critical ideas for any software system (those ideas being minimalism, and synchronization by direct negotiation). I happen to be using Squeak currently because it's the most flexible option. Spoon uses a reduced version of flow, a streaming and networking framework I wrote, and other (as in "self and other" :), a remote message-sending framework I wrote.

Key to the small size of the Spoon snapshot is the ability to unload compiled methods and method dictionaries on demand, swapping them back in automatically and seamlessly from an update server (also implemented with Spoon) when messages requiring them are sent. A list of surviving behaviors is available, as is a list of behaviors that have had all their compiled methods successfully swapped out and reloaded. I have also developed tools that operate on one snapshot from another, using remote message-sending. For example, I have a system browser that browses classes in a remote headless system.

but I hope it continues.